There was but one more fort, but that a strong one, which the plebeian _principes_ had to storm. This was the circle of the priestly colleges. The two religious guilds of paramount political importance, apart from the decemvirate (_sacris faciundis_) to which Plebeians had been already admitted, were those of the pontiffs and augurs. The pontifical college, which in the monarchy had consisted of five members, was now composed of four, the place occupied by the expelled king having never apparently been filled up.[472] The augural college, which should have consisted of six, was also at this time reduced by some accident to four members.[473] In the year 300 B.C. two tribunes, Q. and Cn. Ogulnius, brought forward a bill for raising the number of the augurs to nine, and that of the pontiffs to eight, the added numbers in either case to be taken from the Plebs.[474] The measure was understood to be primarily in the interest of the noble Plebeians, already in possession of curule office and triumphal ornaments, but it did to a large extent assist the rights of the Plebs as a corporation; for the religious veto henceforth, though it might be used by the nobility against the interests of the lower orders, could not be employed by the Patricians to check plebeian measures. The bill, which became law, established the religious equality of the two orders, so far as religion was a political force. It is true that, as we shall see, the Plebs were always excluded from certain non-political priesthoods; but, on the other hand, one of the religious colleges of national importance established in later times—the _triumviri epulones_, created in 196 B.C. for preparing the _epulum Jovis_ and banquets given in honour of the other gods[475]—seems from its origin to have been composed wholly of Plebeians.[476] The change, however, though indirectly favourable to the Plebeians, was not of a democratic character; the priesthoods were kept within a few distinguished families through the principle of appointment. The method was that of cooptation, which we find existing in 453 B.C.[477] It was not until the last century of the Republic that the _lex Domitia_ (104 B.C.) ventured to give the election, not indeed to the Populus, but to a special assembly composed of seventeen out of the thirty-five tribes chosen by lot, and even then the forms of nomination by the head of the college, and of cooptation by its members, were scrupulously observed.[478]